Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation extends media rights cope with Tennis Channel via 2032
The Tennis Channel is extending its cope with the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation that can see the cable TV community and streaming service proceed to broadcast greater than 2,000 matches every season.
Whereas phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed, Tennis Channel CEO Jeff Blackburn instructed CNBC in an interview there was a “fairly huge step up in our funds” to the WTA for the U.S. media rights, which incorporates worldwide tournaments and the WTA Finals occasion. The brand new settlement lasts via 2032.
“Our aim and mission is to simply cowl professional tennis and the sport of tennis like nobody else, day-after-day, each hour, all yr spherical. There’s no offseason,” Blackburn stated. “WTA performs an enormous position in that and it was a giant precedence for me to ensure that we renewed our relationship and prolong it as long run as we have been in a position.”
The unique rights renewal comes because the Tennis Channel is within the midst of a transition on a number of fronts.
Final yr, longtime Tennis Channel CEO Ken Solomon was ousted from the corporate. Blackburn stepped into the position in early Could, following a 24-year profession at Amazon, the place he helped to construct out Prime Video and develop the streaming service into sports activities, amongst different companies.
In the meantime, Sinclair, the proprietor of broadcast stations in addition to the Tennis Channel, had just lately thought of offloading the community, CNBC beforehand reported. The guardian firm, nevertheless, is not exploring a sale of the Tennis Channel, significantly since Blackburn has taken the helm, in response to an individual aware of the matter who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate nonpublic particulars.
Within the backdrop, the Tennis Channel, like its community friends, is contending with the continued lack of clients from the pay-TV bundle. Whereas stay sports activities garner the most important audiences — and leagues have reaped big rights payouts consequently — media corporations are centered on rising the profitability of their streaming companies.
In 2014 the 24/7 tennis community took its first step into streaming with Tennis Channel Plus, and later in 2022 launched Tennis Channel 2, a free, ad-supported streaming channel. Whereas Blackburn stated Tennis Channel 2 has been profitable and attracted a youthful viewers, he’s centered on beefing up the Tennis Channel’s just lately launched direct-to-consumer streaming app.
The app, which launched in November 2024, prices $9.99 a month or $109.99 yearly and provides the identical programming because the pay-TV community. Media corporations are more and more providing the identical stay sports activities featured on pay-TV networks on their counterpart streaming options — most notably with the launch of Disney’s flagship ESPN app later this yr.
“What’s vital concerning the partnership is that they’re committing to doing extra with us,” stated Marina Storti, CEO of WTA Ventures, the industrial arm of the WTA. “They’re dedicated to that elevated publicity throughout all of their platforms. They’re dedicated to making sure this type of equal publicity for ladies and men, the place they’ve the rights. They usually’re making a big dedication. There’s a substantial enhance within the rights charges, which is a giant milestone for us as a part of our plan and dedication to rising.”
The Tennis Channel’s settlement with the WTA covers a big swath of the WTA’s tournaments exterior of North America via the season-closing WTA Finals.
The viewers for WTA occasions on the Tennis Channel has been rising, significantly among the many youthful demographic. Viewership amongst 18- to 34-year-olds on the Tennis Channel has grown yearly for every of the previous two years, in response to a information launch.
‘Equal footing’
The deal comes as American feminine tennis gamers have shot to the highest of worldwide rankings and ladies’s sports activities generally have seen an increase in recognition and funding funding.
Already in 2025, two American girls have received two of the highest majors: Madison Keys took the Australian Open in January, and Coco Gauff was topped the winner of the French Open in June. Gauff and Keys might be among the many members at Wimbledon, which kicks off on Monday.
“Tennis is basically the one main sport the place the boys’s and ladies’s sport is on equal footing, and that’s actually vital,” stated Blackburn. “I feel for tennis it makes it distinctive. The expansion of ladies’s sports activities general? Possibly basketball and soccer will get there, however I feel tennis is manner forward when it comes to offering that for the fan.”
The Tennis Channel 2 free streaming choice has earmarked each Tuesday as “Ladies’s Day” — displaying solely girls’s match protection — and Blackburn highlighted the community’s roster of heavy-hitting feminine expertise, together with former gamers and Corridor of Famers Martina Navratilova and Lindsay Davenport, amongst others.
The deal extension additionally builds on WTA Ventures’ latest efforts to develop its industrial income and construct the profiles of its athletes.
In 2023 the WTA fashioned a strategic partnership with non-public fairness agency CVC Capital Companions, which invested $150 million for a 20% stake within the newly created WTA Ventures. The entity was fashioned to deal with rising industrial income via sponsorships and media rights offers, with the aim of tripling its income by 2029.
In 2024 WTA Ventures stated it anticipated to extend income by 24% in its first full yr.
The media rights extension marks the primary renegotiation with the Tennis Channel beneath the WTA Ventures framework. The WTA’s long-standing media rights cope with streaming service DAZN expires on the finish of subsequent yr, and talks have begun for brand new offers that may start in 2027, stated Storti.
WTA Ventures stated its international viewers surpassed 1 billion viewers on broadcast and streaming final season, and Storti stated the U.S. is amongst one of many WTA’s largest development markets, together with China and Poland.
“We’re a very mass-market product that draws tons of of tens of millions of followers internationally, and I’d say we ship a product that stands form of shoulder to shoulder with the boys counterpart,” Storti stated.
The WTA has additionally just lately emphasised enhancements for gamers.
This yr it’s has introduced a paid maternity depart funded by the Saudi Public Funding Fund, in addition to a brand new coverage permitting gamers to guard their rankings throughout fertility remedies
Nonetheless, tennis isn’t with out its problems with disparity. Whereas the U.S. Open awarded equal prize cash to women and men starting in 1973, it was many years forward of Wimbledon and different majors. And whereas equal prize cash is given on the majors stage, there’s nonetheless a substantial pay hole at lower-level tournaments.
The game additionally drew criticism across the 2025 French Open when the vast majority of prime-time slots went to males’s matches.